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U.S. military personnel taking part in the siege were criticized for targeting and killing civilians; blocking access to hospitals; intentionally firing on ambulances; and using chemical weapons against the civilian population, including white phosphorus. No one knows the number of those who died because the devastation of the city was so great.

According to a report published on GlobalSecurity.org, the ROE the soldiers were given for the siege were “draconian"; the commanders in Fallujah did not authorize the use of non-lethal munitions. Instead, the ROE given to the soldiers focused on protecting U.S. military forces with shoot to kill orders on the sighting of anyone with an AK47 or Rocket Propelled Grenade outside a private home. The number of civilian Iraqi deaths resulting from the siege is disputed; however, on April 11, 2004, The New Standard reported that local medical authorities said over 600 bodies had been counted at emergency medical facilities; “a significant number of victims [were] buried without ever receiving care at a clinic or hospital… [; and] two entire football fields [were] converted into cemeteries.” 

In light of the high number of Iraqi civilians who were killed during the siege on Fallujah, the Sgrena incident generated additional questions about the ROE under which the soldiers were acting in Fallujah. Even supporters of the war have harsh words about the ROE, saying “[t]he current ROE are ‘questionable.’ A Marine officer caught up in the bloody fight to clear Fallujah was much harsher in his assessment: ‘Blood,’ he observed, ‘is on someone’s hands.’” The high civilian death toll in Fallujah prompted further questions about the use of chemical weapons against civilians and how the military distinguished between civilians and combatants during the siege. Clearly, no rational, legal ROE could ever authorize such a wholesale slaughter of civilians and destruction of an entire city. 

In response to the military’s actions in the Sgrena incident and in Fallujah, on March 17, 2005, the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild and Marguerite Hiken submitted a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request to the Department of Defense requesting the ROE and other documents for the soldiers involved in the shooting at Sgrena’s car and the soldiers involved in the siege of Fallujah. In response, throughout the administrative process and throughout this litigation, defendants have been dismissive of their statutory obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. 

They have furthermore been cavalier about both the FOIA’s presumption of disclosure and their burden – not the public’s – to substantiate their withholding of responsive records. The documents ultimately disclosed by defendants evince, clearly, that the government has no intention of sincerely responding to plaintiffs’ request and seeks to hide information that would shed light on war crimes and bloodbath in Fallujah. As Judge Patel has previously done, the Court should take the government to task for its dismal compliance with the FOIA and order the release of information the government seeks to keep from the American public; the Department of Defense and U.S. Central Command should not be allowed to hide behind the “trust us” rhetoric of “national security” to justify its withholding of documents that shed light on our military’s illegal and immoral conduct in the war in Iraq.
 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE